Question

In radioactive materials a parent atom decays into a daughter, such as uranium-238 decaying into lead-206. For some radioisotope dating methods you have to assume you know the amount of daughter atoms in the crystal, so you can tell how much is a result of radioactive decay (and thus get an age for the rock). Please answer this question: why are zircon crystals so useful for uranium/lead dating? If you don't remember from class, can you read this article.

Answer 1

In order for scientists to know how old a fossil is they use the process of fossil dating of relative dating. The most common method of dating is the Uranium-lead dating. There are multiple minerals used for uranium-lead dating, the most common/preferred is Zircon. The mineral zircon is ideal because:

• Zircon is a hard mineral, this makes it impervious to weathering.
• It is resistant to chemical and mechanical weathering, and metamorphism

Step-by-step explanation: